


Forgive

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:24:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>In this universe, the solution is the youngest graduate of the Jaeger Academy</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgive

**Author's Note:**

> This fic incorporates Travis Beachem's comments that Herc had a brother named Scott who was an "aggressive Lothario" and got booted out of the Rangers under sketchy conditions. 
> 
> I've taken that to mean that Scott Hansen is a rapey, rapey rapist. You are warned. You're also warned that this fic is full of sad things and angst and more sad things. 
> 
> If the idea of a seventeen year old Mako having sexual thoughts disturbs you, this is not the fic for you.

When you are thirty-four, Scissure attacks Sydney. You are unable to save either your wife and your son. How long does it take for you to forgive yourself?

…

When you are thirty-eight, you experience, via the Drift, your brother raping a fifteen year old girl. After four years in a Conn-POD with him, you aren’t standing next to him, watching. Instead, you are in his body. You are on top of her, listening to her sob that she lied about how old she was, she is sorry, please, it hurts. Paradoxically, the further out of alignment you fall with Scott, the more you slide into the RABIT, and when she begs you not to come inside her, you rip out of your motion harness and lunge for Scott, never mind the fact that Lucky Seven is part of an active three-team drop on the biggest Category 2 kaiju to date. 

The girl doesn’t want to press charges, and your testimony isn’t admissible in anything that looks like a court. The only thing Stacker can do is get Scott cashiered out of the Corps with a _dishonorable discharge code of conduct unbecoming of a Ranger_. 

How long does it take for you to forgive yourself?

…

When you are thirty-nine, Australia says that they will fund construction of the Mark V if Stacker Pentecost can find the development money and, also, if he can guarantee them an Australian pilot. _Have you forgotten that we’re at war, soldier?_ Pentecost roars at you.

But you look at him with a face that reflects the flat, cold place of guilt and regret and shame that you have lived in for — for the past five years, if you’re being honest with yourself, and seeing it, Stacker changes tactics: he was a pilot himself. He understands how deep the Drift can run, and he sees, too, the issue is not a lack of fighting spirit, but instead, trust.

Would a stranger be better? Scott proved that knowing someone for decades is no guarantee of them being decent.

In another universe, the solution to the problem is your sixteen year old son, the second-youngest graduate of the Jaeger Academy.

In this universe, your son died, fried by the second nuclear bomb that the Australian government dropped to stop Scissure: in this universe, the solution is the youngest graduate of the Jaeger Academy, who happens to be living at the Shatterdome, who you happen to have been drilling with in your informal practice Kwoon sessions run for Academy graduates who don’t have a Jaeger yet. Who happens made out of steel and determination and raw courage that burns in the Drift like thermite in deep water. 

Who happens to be Stacker Pentecost’s daughter. Who happens to be seventeen. 

…

When you are forty-one, you’re sitting in your quarters in the Manila Shatterdome, eying the bottle of Shatterdome made moonshine on the shelf and wondering how bad of an idea it would be to lose yourself in it. There is a knock at the door, though, and you breath out a sigh of relief. You go answer it: Mako. 

"You should be out getting drunk with people your age," you say, and she smiles a little, because at this point in the night, it’s a joke: her birthday party had been you and Stacker and Tendo Choi and Tendo’s fiance, all standing in the Marshal’s quarters for a dinner that Mako had been planning for weeks. Everyone there had been at least a decade older than Mako. Allison was the youngest, followed by Tendo, followed by the Marshal, followed by you.

Three courses, Mako had announced, at the start of the evening, bowing a little to everyone, with dessert to follow. The pleasure of their company was all that was requested — Manila was not a free port, and the Shatterdome was under rations the same as the civilians. At the end, Mako came out of the kitchen with a cake baked with a month’s worth of saved sugar and flour and butter and eggs, all of her own rations, the end result of scrimping and eating a lot of rice. The chocolate had been contributed, under slightly gray circumstances, by Tendo Choi who told, when asked, a story about a grandmother he met one day who had been planning to bake her grandson a beautiful, beautiful birthday cake, but then his number came up for the in-land relocation lottery, so he was going, and what was she going to do with this beautiful chocolate? 

Tendo’s fiancee, Allison, had given Mako her family’s secret recipe and came over in the afternoon for technical assistance, and now, Mako is standing in front of you, wearing the same clothes as at the party. She smells like dish soap, but also, that the yellow and red orchid that had been in the flowers that you brought down at the Dimsalong Market, because you didn’t know what to bring her. 

"May I come in?" she says, and you nod, so she does.

"May I close the door behind me?" Your throat hurts, and once the door is closed, Mako puts her arms up behind your neck and kisses you, slow and thorough, her tongue against your teeth, her tongue against your tongue, like she has been wondering about what your mouth feels and tastes like for months. You bring your hands up and put them on either side of her waist, not quite sure how hard you’re allowed to hold her, and after a little while more kissing, she pulls away. 

"Was that all right?" she asks, watching your face. 

Your heart is beating almost painfully hard inside your chest, so you nod.

Then, Mako unbuttons her blouse. She came in wearing the clothes that she wore at her dinner party under the apron: a white blouse with a curving collar, and a blue skirt. It was the PPDC uniform, rendered civilian, and when she unbuttons her blouse, you see that she is wearing a white bra underneath. Without breaking eye contact, Mako brings her right hand up to your cheek and runs her fingers against the stubble there. It makes a slight rasping noise, and then, she reaches down, takes your right hand, and puts it against her skin. 

Slowly, you breathe out, and you run your hand up a little, then down. Mako closes her eyes and sighs: you’ve seen a Drift memory of her lying on her back in her bunk with her hand between her legs, thinking of you and imagining your hand touching her like this. 

"Tell me if you want to stop," you say, and your voice feels rough in your throat. 

Mako shakes her head, and she kisses you again, this time with her blouse and bra shrugged off and her breasts pressed against you. Her hands are warm, and she shivers when you run your hands down her bare sides. Slowly, carefully, you lean her backwards on the table, and you take a moment to look at her. There is a part of you that wants to tell Mako this doesn’t have to mean anything: the two of you can have a night together and never have sex again. Or the two of you can even have sex from time to time, whenever she wants. However she’d like it to be, you want to tell her. You’d be fine with it, because this doesn’t have to mean anything.

Then, Mako touches your cheek again, running her hand over the stubble and smiling, and you know that if you say it, it would be a lie. There are twenty-three years in age between the two of you, but also two dead kaiju together in five deployments, plus dozens and dozens of simulator Drifts. How many hours in the Kwoon? You’ve known Mako Mori has wanted you since the first time the two of you Drifted together, and you want nothing so much in the world, at this moment, as to feel her body underneath your mouth.

So you pull up a chair. With Mako’s hand against your cheek, you put your mouth between her legs.

…

When you are forty-three, you ask Mako, awkwardly, if she wants to get married. She laughs and says when the war is over.

…

When you are forty-four, you ask Mako, since her face lights up everytime she sees a dog go by the fence at the Shatterdome, whether she wants to get one: senior pilots at almost any Shatterdome you visit. Who would say no? But Mako frowns and says that quarantine would be an issue: with the pace of kaiju coming through the Breach, with the decreasing number of Jaegers, the two of you move to a different Shatterdome almost every month. It’s no life for a dog, she says, and there is something about the way that she says it that makes you think, maybe after the war, the two of you might —

…

Mutavore slams into the Wall of Life while you and Mako are at a decommissioning ceremony for Striker. You are in PPDC dress blues, and so is Mako. There had been an idea, originally, that the Defense Minister’s envoy was going to symbolically remove a screw from Striker to symbolize the end of the era, but Striker’s lead tech, Gabby Laidlaw, told the event planner where he could shove the screwdriver. Nobody was going to take Striker Eureka apart but actual professionals who knew her and helped build her and keep her running for the past five years through twenty-one deployments and nine kaiju kills, and now, the Defense Minister’s envoy — an undersecretary to an undersecretary, you suspect — is roughly halfway through his speech about the changing world and the national obligation to meet it.

Gabby slips back in behind you. She touches your arm, then Mako’s shoulders, and angles her phone so that you can see — they’ve shut down the internal information relays, but the news makes clear. Far end of the scale. 

"Why can’t we hear the alarm?" you ask, maybe a little more loudly than you should.

"They turned off electricity to this bay three hours ago. The sound system is running off a long cord," Mako says. Then, she looks up from the phone at Gabby. "That's classified as a Category 4?"

"Bloody big one," Gabby says, and you look at Mako, and the corners of her mouth are already tilted upwards. She is smiling back at you in a way that she wouldn’t have done four years before. Then, she stands. In a normal tone of voice, she starts coordinating with Gabby on what needs to happen to get Striker out there.. How much time did Gabby think before landfall? Were the K-Stunner ramjets still loaded? Yes? Good. 

For your part, you climb the stand, displace the suit, and announce to the dignitaries that the ceremony is canceled due to a kaiju attack. If they’d like, they’re welcome to wait out the attack in the designated safety areas.

What are they going to do? Take Striker away from the two of you?

…

When you are forty-five, Angela has been dead for eleven years, and so has Chuck. Scott is maybe still alive, somewhere in the world, and you think of him once or twice a year: you’re in Hong Kong, in Striker Eureka with all the systems blacked out. Mako is next to you.

…

When you are forty-five, Herc Hansen, you’re in Striker Eureka with all the systems blacked out. Mako is next to you, and the Conn-Pod is dark.

Somewhere out there is one of the biggest kaiju ever to come through the Breach. Somewhere behind you is the city of Hong Kong, one of the last great port cities left on Earth, and you unhook yourself from the motion harness even though Mako was screaming for you not to. After five years of Drifting together, that fresh from the neural connection, you understand Japanese as well as she does: still, you unhooked yourself and were thrown against the bulkhead. The pain burned straight through you, left you breathless and weak in the knees, and on the evac helicopter, the medics diagnosed a clavicle fracture. 

Consequently, you don’t know what you expected to see when you come out of the tunnel, arm in a sling, Stacker Pentecost in a Driftsuit next to you. Mako’s face, crumbling and desperately fighting back tears, hurts worse than your broken collarbone, though. It’s worse than anything you can remember and almost more than you can comprehend. Thirty minutes later, standing in the hallway with Pentecost twenty feet away, pretending not to hear, your voice won’t come out of your throat. You want to tell her that you’re sorry, and you try, but Mako cuts you off. Even in her Driftsuit boots, with her helmet under her arm, Mako has to lean up to kiss you. She puts her hand, in the Driftsuit glove, against your cheek. She says that she expects you to be waiting on the Shatterdome bay floor with a justice of the peace: the war will be over, and she intends to marry you.

…

You remember Mako after Mutavore, while the two of you were waiting for helicopter evac and Gabby was yelling while fighting with civilian air traffic control that yes, her pilots had just saved the entire city, so they could bloody well go —

"Screw this," you say and reach up and snap off the conn. Mako’s eyes are dancing; her cheeks are flushed. After disconnecting from the motion harnesses, the two of you climb up, hand in hand, out of the Conn-Pod and onto Striker’s shoulders. Mutavore lies on its side, half along the street, half in a public park, leaking blue kaiju blood onto asphalt and greenery and benches and cars. Car alarms are wailing; distantly, you can hear helicopters.

They’ll need to get a containment team out quickly, and you wish that they’d been able to activate Striker in time to keep it from landfall, but the electricity had been turned off to the Shatterdome bay. They were relying on natural light for the decommissioning ceremony, so what could anybody expect? Mako strips off her Driftsuit glove off, then reaches up and touches the side of your face. Bare skin eases the fade from being mentally linked, and you close your eyes. You remember showing her the first time: your hand against her cheek, her closed eyes, and the way she had relaxed into your hand. You also know what it means to her to stand on the shoulders of Striker like this, looking out at a city she saved. When she touches you like this, you can feel the shared memory warm over your shoulders.

"So how about Hong Kong?" she asks, and you start laughing. You kiss the fingers of Mako’s hand, then open your eyes. 

She is smiling at you, and a breeze blows from the water. The sun is out.

You wish you could live in this memory forever, Herc Hansen. 

…

When Gipsy Danger closes the Breach, you’re standing in LOCCENT, arm in a sling: you disconnected from your motion rig too soon, and for years and years, scavengers find pieces of Striker Eureka on the beaches of the Indonesian archipelago. 

You have all the rest of your life, Herc Hansen, not to forgive yourself.

**Author's Note:**

> You should actually go read [this](http://siterlas.tumblr.com/post/58435857918/more-about-the-post-movie-herc-mako-thing-follows), which is a lot better in a lot of respects. Like. A lot. (And which inspired this in no small degree, because man, the sad in that is just the most amazing thing.) 
> 
> Also, I have a suspicion that I cribbed Tendo's explanation for the chocolate from something, but I cannot remember/track it down for the life of me. If you know what I cribbed it from, please let me know!


End file.
